Writing Up A Factor Analysis

James Neill Centre for Applied Psychology University of Canberra Having conducted your factor analysis, here's a checklist for what you should consider covering in your lab report. This is not meant to be an exhaustive-to-be-followed-to-the-letter list. Rather, you should take your own approach which complies with APA standards for laboratory reports and which clearly demonstrates your understanding of factor analysis as it has been applied in your study. These suggestions can hopefully, however, supplement and guide your write-up process. Theoretical underpinning A good report will present not only the FA results, but will also explain the theoretical underpinning of the structure of the constructs being measured. This will most likely occur in the introduction and discussion. The introduction might review and critique previous conceptualisations and measurements and may even summarise previous factor analyses. The discussion might summarise and critique the current studys findings about the structure of student satisfaction and make suggestions for future measurement of student satisfaction. Assumption testing In the results, describe how you went about testing the assumptions for FA. Details regarding Measures of Sampling Adequacy should be reported. Strive to be thorough, clear and succinct. Type of FA PC or PA In the results, explain what FA extraction method was used and explain why. Number of Factors & Items Removed In the results, explain the criteria and process used for deciding how many factors and which items were selected in the current data. Clearly explain which items were removed and why, plus the number of factors extracted and why. Rotation: In the results, explain what rotation methods were attempted, the reasons why, and the results. Factor Loadings Final factor loadings should be reported in an APA formatted table. This table should also report plus the communality for each variable in the final column. Report factor loadings to two decimal places and use excellent labels. Correlations between the factors should also be included in the report, perhaps at the bottom of this table. The correlation matrix amongst the items should also normally also be included (e.g., in a journal article) so that others people can re-analyse your data. For the lab report, this is not necessary, although you can include it an appendix if you like. Label Factors Meaningful names for the extracted factors should be proposed. You may like to use previously selected factor names, but on examining the actual items and factors you think a different name is more appropriate. One factor naming method is to use the top one or two loading items for each factor. A well labeled factor provides an accurate, useful description of the underlying construct and helps to facilitate the clarity of the report. 1

Reliability analyses In the results, details of the reliability analyses should be provided. This could be reported in a descriptives table containing the names of the factors, the number of items in each factor, descriptive statistics for the composite scores (e.g. mean, SD, Skewness and Kurtosis), and Cronbachs alpha.

SAMPLE FACTOR ANALYSIS WRITE-UP

Exploratory Factor Analysis of the Short Version of the Adolescent Coping Scale
James Neill Centre for Applied Psychology University of Canberra Summarised Extract from Neill (1994) Summary of the Introduction (Related to the Factor Analysis) Coping refers to the ways in which people deal with perceived stressors in their lives. A wide variety of different coping efforts are employed by people, such as ignoring problems, venting frustration, asking others what they what do, thinking positive, and working on solving the cause of the problem. Psychologists have proposed several different ways of categorising underlying coping responses. In empirical studies, there has been no clear consensus on the underlying factor structure of coping responses. Proposed factor structures have ranged from two factor (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) to 18 factor models (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993). Adolescent coping is of particular interest, because adolescence is seen as a challenging period during which individuals are developing independent identities, experimenting with different ways of coping, and establishing coping patterns for adulthood. To date, only one instrument has been specifically developed for assessing the coping strategies used by adolescents, the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS) (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993). For the long version of the ACS (79 items), the instruments authors proposed an 18-factor structure, and suggest the possibility of three higher order factors Problem-solving coping (e.g., focusing on solving the problem, working hard, focusing on the positive), Reference to Others (e.g, asking friends what they would do, spending time with girlfriend/boyfriend, asking a professional person for help), and Non-productive Coping (e.g., worrying, wishing the problem would go away). The short version of the ACS consists of one item from each of the proposed 18 factors. Frydenberg and Lewis (1993) propose that a three factor solution could also be used to summarise the underlying covariation between the 18 items, however only limited testing of this factor structure has been conducted to date (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993). Summary of the Method Participants Year 9 and 10 high-school participants in 9 day Outward Bound Australia programs reported on the frequency with which they used different types of coping strategies when dealing with their problems or concerns during their Outward Bound experience. In total data was collected from 255 participants (142 males; 113 females) with an average age of 14.4 years.

Materials The 18 items from the short version of the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS) (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993) were modified slightly (to past tense) so that participants rated the extent to which they used each of the 18 coping responses during the Outward Bound program. An example item is Worked at solving the problem to the best of my ability. Responses were on a Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = Didnt do it at all, 2 = Used very little, 3 = Used sometimes, 4 = Used often, 5 = Used a great deal. The 79-item version of the ACS was administered, however this analysis focused only on the 18 items from the proposed short form of the ACS (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993). Procedure Participants completed a modified short version of the ACS towards the end of their 9 day Outward Bound program. The instrument was administered by the group instructors, along with a measure of self-concept and psychological well being, as part of a larger study. A standard protocol for the administering was used (see Appendix A not included in this example). Results Data Screening The data was screened for univariate outliers. Three out-of-range values, due to administrative errors, were identified and recoded as missing data. The minimum amount of data for factor analysis was satisfied, with a final sample size of 218 (using listwise deletion), with over 12 cases per variable. Factor Analysis Initially, the factorability of the 18 ACS items was examined. Several well-recognised criteria for the factorability of a correlation were used. Firstly, 16 of the 18 items correlated at least .3 with at least one other item, suggesting reasonable factorability. Secondly, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was .73, above the recommended value of .6, and Bartletts test of sphericity was significant (2 (153) = 840.26, p < .05). The diagonals of the anti-image correlation matrix were all over .5, supporting the inclusion of each item in the factor analysis. Finally, the communalities were all above .3 (see Table 1), further confirming that each item shared some common variance with other items. Given these overall indicators, factor analysis was conducted with all 18 items. Principle components analysis was used because the primary purpose was to identify and compute composite coping scores for the factors underlying the short version of the ACS. The initial eigen values showed that the first factor explained 19% of the variance, the second factor 16% of the variance, and a third factor 9% of the variance. The fourth, fifth and sixth factors had eigen values of just over one, each factor explaining 6%. Three, four, five and six factor solutions were examined, using both varimax and oblimin rotations of the factor loading matrix. The three factor solution, which explained 43% of the variance, was preferred because of its previous theoretical support, the leveling off of eigen values on the scree plot after three factors, and the insufficient number of primary loadings and difficulty of interpreting the fourth factor and subsequent factors. There was little difference between the varimax and oblimin solutions, thus both solutions were examined in the subsequent analyses before deciding on an oblimin rotation for the final solution. During several steps, a total of four items were eliminated because they did not contribute to a simple factor structure and failed to meet a minimum criteria of having a primary factor loading of .4 or above, and no cross-loading of .3 or above. The item Spent more time with girlfriend/boyfriend did not load above .3 on any factor. The item Found a way to relax had factor loadings between .3 4

and .4 on both Reference to Others and Problem-solving. Improved my relationship with others had similar factor loadings, between .4 and .5, on Reference to Others and Problem-solving. Finally, Prayed for help and guidance had a primary factor loading of .53 on the Non-productive factor (which was well defined by 7 other items) and a cross-loading of .37 on Problem-solving coping for the varimax solution. In addition, this item had a floor effect, with 42% of students reporting not using this strategy at all. A principle-components factor analysis of the remaining 14 items, using varimax and oblimin rotations was conducted, with the three factors explaining 49% of the variance. An oblimin rotation provided the best defined factor structure. All items had primary loadings over .5 and only one item had a cross-loading above .3 (Kept fit and healthy), however this item had a strong primary loading of .74. The factor loading matrix for this final solution is presented in Table 1. Table 1 Factor loadings and communalities based on a principle components analysis with oblimin rotation for 14 items from the short version of the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS) (N = 218) Non- Proble Referen Commu product mce to nality ive solving others .74 .55 .69 .48 .63 .58 .57 .54 .53 .76 .27 .74 .72 .54 -.80 -.72 -.72 .33 .27 -.28 .39 .45 .33 .39 .33 .62 .62 .59 .34 .66 .55 .52

Worry about what would happen next Shut myself off from the problem so that I can avoid it Saw myself as being at fault Didnt let others know how I was feeling I had no way of dealing with the situation Wished a miracle would happen Found a way to let off steam, e.g., cry, scream, drink, take drugs Worked at solving the problem to the best of my ability Kept fit and healthy Worked hard Looked on the bright side of things and think of all that is good Talked to other people about my concern to help me sort it out Joined with people who have the same concern Spent more time with boy/girl friend Asked a professional person for help Note. Factor loadings < .2 are suppressed

The factor labels proposed by Frydenberg and Lewis (1993) suited the extracted factors and were retained. Internal consistency for each of the scales was examined using Cronbachs alpha. The alphas were moderate -- .68 for Reference to Others (3 items), .72 for Non-Productive coping (7 5

items), and .63 for Problem Solving (4 items). No substantial increases in alpha for any of the scales could have been achieved by eliminating more items. Composite scores were created for each of the three factors, based on the mean of the items which had their primary loadings on each factor. Higher scores indicated greater use of the coping strategy. Problem-solving was the coping factor that students reported using the most, with a negatively skewed distribution, whilst Reference to Others and Non-Productive Coping were used considerably less and had positively skewed distributions. Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 2. The skewness and kurtosis were well within a tolerable range for assuming a normal distribution and examination of the histograms suggested that the distributions looked approximately normal (see Appendix A). Although an oblimin rotation was used, only small correlations between each of the composite scores existed - .17 between Problem Solving and Reference to Others, -.07 between Problem Solving and Non-Productive coping, and .15 between Reference to Others and NonProductive coping. Table 2 Descriptive statistics for the three Adolescent Coping Scale factors (N = 218) No. of M (SD) Skewness items 7 2.29 (.68) .36 4 3.78 (.72) -.54 3 2.35 (.88) .39 Kurtosis .20 .43 -.24 Alpha .72 .63 .68

Non-Productive Problem-Solving Reference to Others

Overall, these analyses indicated that three distinct factors were underlying adolescent responses to the short version of the ACS items and that these factors were moderately internally consistent. Four of the eighteen items were eliminated, however the original factor structure proposed by Frydenberg and Lewis (1993) was retained. An approximately normal distribution was evident for the composite score data in the current study, thus the data were well suited for parametric statistical analyses. References Frydenberg, E., & Lewis, R. (1993). Adolescent Coping Scale: Administrators Manual. ACER: Hawthorn, Australia. Lazarus, R.S., and Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal and Coping. Springer: New York. Neill, J. T. (1994). The effect of Outward Bound high school programs on adolescents' self-concept, mental health, and coping strategies. Unpublished honour's thesis, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia. Neill, J. T., & Heubeck, B. (1997). Adolescent coping styles and outdoor education: Searching for the mechanisms of change. In Proceedings of the 1st International Adventure Therapy Conference: Exploring the Boundaries, 1-5 July, 1997 (pp.227-243). Camping & Outdoor Education Association of Western Australia: Perth, Australia.

Appendix A: Histograms of the distribution of adolescents responses to the composite ACS scales.
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Std. Dev = .72 Mean = 3.78 N = 218.00

Problem Solving

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Std. Dev = .88 Mean = 2.35 N = 218.00 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00 4.50 5.00

Reference to Others

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10 Std. Dev = .68 Mean = 2.29 0 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 2.25 2.50 2.75 3.00 3.25 3.50 3.75 4.00 4.25 4.50 4.75 N = 218.00

Non-Productive Coping